Anger is one of the most visible emotions men are "allowed" to have.

In this episode, we unpack how anger often masks deeper emotions like depression, overwhelm, fear, and low self-esteem. Using a listener letter, we explore why so many men say “I’m not angry, I’m just frustrated,” while the people around them experience something very different.

We dive into:

• The difference between anger vs. frustration
• Why men feel a false sense of urgency when their character is questioned
• How performance, perfectionism and pressure of being a provider fuel emotional shutdown
• Why anger becomes a tool for control and protection
• How trauma teaches men to survive through reactivity
• What it looks like to build a strong sense of self without defensiveness

This episode isn’t about excusing harmful behavior, but about understanding it well enough to change it.

If you’ve ever been told you have an “anger problem,” felt constantly misunderstood, or noticed that your emotions only show up as irritation or rage, this conversation is for you.

When men shut down, blow up, or run from their feelings altogether, it isn’t just a personal issue, it’s a public health concern.

In this extended trailer for Season 2, we pull back the curtain on how men hide low self-esteem and how it often shows up as anger, avoidance, productivity, and escape.

This season explores how those patterns don’t stay contained within the individual, they spill into relationships, families, workplaces, and entire communities. We take a deep dive into anger as a mask, numbness as survival, cultural pressure to “hold it together,” and the loneliness that hides in plain sight.

If Season 1 was about starting the conversation, Season 2 is about naming what men are really carrying and learning how to set it down, for their own well-being and for the people who love them.

What happens when the people who raised you never learned how to show up emotionally?

In our season 1 finale, we open up about our own relationships with our parents (spoiler alert: it's complicated), and the grief, the guilt, and the surprising relief that can come with finally choosing yourself.

We dive into the rise of no-contact relationships among young adults, the impact of emotionally immature parents, and what it means to demand healthy boundaries when your family never modeled them. We explore the spectrum of differentiation (from helicopter parenting and enmeshment to complete cutoff) and how to find peace somewhere in between whether you're low-contact, still going home for the holidays, or not speaking at all.

We unpack what it means to reparent your inner child, navigate family estrangement, and grieve a parent who is still alive… and still unable to meet you where you are. This conversation is for anyone who's ever left a family gathering and wondered, "maybe I'm not the problem?"

Resources:

• Gentle Parenting Reimagined by Dr. Paul Sunseri
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

This episode closes out our relationship series. We’ll be back January 2026 with a Season 2 deep-dive on covert male depression. In the meantime, catch up on episodes you missed, share this season with someone who needs it, and join the conversation over on TikTok @broingpains.